The Week

Campus police guarded the fence around the oak grove Wednesday as media crews and onlookers watched the fenced-in tree sitters. Photograph by Riya Bhattacharjee.
Campus police guarded the fence around the oak grove Wednesday as media crews and onlookers watched the fenced-in tree sitters. Photograph by Riya Bhattacharjee.
 

News

UC Stadium Oak Grove Fence Prompts Violent Clash

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday August 31, 2007

It began with a flimsy yellow ribbon and ended with a riot, two arrests and a courtroom hearing. -more-


Judge Rules Fence Can Stay At Oak Grove

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday August 31, 2007

Judge Barbara Miller ruled late Thursday that the chain-link fence at the UC stadium oak grove does not violate the preliminary injunction against any alteration at the site. -more-


First-Day Jitters for Berkeley Students

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday August 31, 2007

The first day of the new school year went off without a hitch for Berkeley public schools Wednes-day. -more-


Oakland Schools Announce $3 Million Deficit Increase

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday August 31, 2007

Oakland Unified School District board members were informed on Wednesday night that a $1.4 million district deficit in the adopted 2007-08 budget—which district officials had said had been whittled down from a projected $4.3 million deficit last June—was now up to $4.7 million in updated figures recently compiled by the district’s interim chief financial officer. -more-


UC to Present Agenda for City’s New Downtown Plan

By Richard Brenneman
Friday August 31, 2007

The battle lines over just how much and how high new development should rise in downtown Berkeley are growing, with UC Berkeley weighing in on the side of greater density. -more-


DAPAC-Landmarks Move to Finish Downtown Report

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday August 31, 2007

The joint subcommitee of the Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) and the Downtown Area Planning Advisory Commission (DAPAC) met Monday to develop a final version of the Historic Preservation and Urban Design chapter which DAPAC is scheduled to consider this fall. -more-


Oakland School Bill Passes

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday August 31, 2007

Oakland Assemblymember Sandré Swanson’s AB45 Oakland school bill passed the Senate Appropriations Committee on a 10-7 vote on Thursday afternoon, bringing the Oakland Unified School District a step closer to possible return to full local control. -more-


Cal Bears Kick Off Football Season on Saturday

By Steven Finacom, Special to the Planet
Friday August 31, 2007

Each August, fans of many top-ranked college football teams sit down to scrutinize an all-important statistic. -more-


Riot Erupts Over Fencing In of UC Oak Grove

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday August 28, 2007

It began with a flimsy yellow ribbon and ended with a riot, two arrests and a courtroom hearing. -more-


BHS Officials Hope to Quell Back-to-School Chaos

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday August 28, 2007

When Berkeley High starts on Wednesday, school officials are hoping there will be no need this year for “zoo time,” as the beginning-of-the-school-year pandemonium at Berkeley High is commonly known, with students clamoring for books, calendars and lockers. -more-


Demolition Work Raises Questions in West Berkeley

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday August 28, 2007

A group of Berkeley residents are questioning why the windows of a building at 1050 Parker St. are being dismantled prior to the building getting a demolition use permit from the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB). Demolition permits for any building over 40 years old in a commercial zone must first be reviewed by the Landmarks Preservation Commission to determine whether it has any historic significance. -more-


Verizon Sues Berkeley Over Cell Phone Towers

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday August 28, 2007

Cell phone giant Verizon Wireless filed a lawsuit against the City of Berkeley in the Federal Court of Oakland last week for allegedly being in violation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. -more-


Time Will Tell If Dobbins Can Survive School Board Censure

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday August 28, 2007

Can the once-promising political future of Oakland Unified School District board member Chris Dobbins survive the recent scandal and censure? To quote the most trite of answers: Only time will tell. -more-


Group to Announce Results of West Berkeley Air Quality Testing

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday August 28, 2007

Air monitors set up by a group of West Berkeley residents in May to detect emissions from Pacific Steel Casting (PSC) reveal high levels of toxic metals nickel and manganese. -more-


Art Exhibit Stirs Controversy Among Korean Americans

By Peter Schurmann, New America Media
Tuesday August 28, 2007

The Korean king kneels, hands clasped in a gesture of submission. Above him looms the Japanese empress, at the head of an armada and clad in full samurai armor with sword outstretched. His armies defeated and his lands occupied, the king swears his country’s eternal loyalty to the Japanese throne. -more-


First Person: Six Years into War on Terror, TV Violence Has Skyrocketed

By Margot Pepper
Tuesday August 28, 2007

Violence, selfishness and insults have skyrocketed on national television since the first year of the war on terror, my second-grade students at Rosa Parks Elementary in Berkeley found. -more-


Police Blotter

By Rio Bauce
Tuesday August 28, 2007

Assault with a deadly weapon -more-


Opinion

Editorials

Editorial: The People Are Given More Bread, Bigger Circuses

By Becky O’Malley
Friday August 31, 2007

For openers, whining (or whinging, if you’re British). I very seldom try to take a whole week off, and even then I try to fill this space via e-mail if I can. In fact, the last time I tried this, I was in Oxford when the University of California at Berkeley suckered one of its devoted alumni into letting them off the hook on the City of Berkeley’s righteous lawsuit challenging just one of the university’s several mammoth expansion schemes which are proposed over the next 20 years. Planet reporters did a good job of covering the fireworks, but it would have been fun to see them close up. -more-


Editorial: Celebrating the Small Changes

By Becky O’Malley
Tuesday August 28, 2007

For many months, there was a bottle of champagne in our office refrigerator, being saved for the day Karl Rove was indicted. The donor wasn’t a member of the reporting staff, since they are expected to preserve the appearance of political neutrality, but I’m pretty sure that if and when Rove had actually been indicted everyone, including the reporters, would have accepted a celebratory glass with enthusiasm. It didn’t happen—Rove was allowed to slither off the scene without going to jail, an over-enthusiastic former sales manager popped the champagne cork for some petty triumph, and the focus shifted to Alberto Gonzales as villain-du-jour. (Meanwhile, the odious Rummy had also left the building.) -more-


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Friday August 31, 2007

MISREPRESENTING THE FACTS -more-


Commentary: Kitchen Democracy: The Great Pretender

By Steve Martinot
Friday August 31, 2007

The question of Kitchen Democracy (KD) has emerged in an important way in Berkeley over the last few months; and we need to understand its potential impact on what we are trying to do. Kitchen Democracy is a website that purports to constitute a connection between citizens and city hall. -more-


Commentary: Berkeley’s Misplaced Planning Priorities

By Paul Glusman
Friday August 31, 2007

I am so thankful to Dan Marks of the Berkeley Planning Department for pointing out how the planners know better than the citizens what is best for everyone. It is so relaxing just to be able to leave all the decisions to the professionals. Why should we criticize them for favoring big developers when only two or three of their 100 or so taxpayer-funded staff spends time on Big Projects? Of course the rest of them are busy handing out forms like the ones I filled out when I moved my law office from one office suite to another, asking how much food I would sell on the new premises and whether I planned to sell alcoholic beverages. One always has to watch for lawyers selling alcoholic beverages to minors in law offices close to the impressionable University of California students. I had, of course, thought that the admissions standards were too strict for the university to be accepting the kind of person who would walk into a law office looking to order a gin and tonic (and as yet, none have), but our city bureaucrats know better than we do about such things, and the best thing is to let them do their jobs (while envying them their health insurance.) -more-


Letters to the Editor

Tuesday August 28, 2007

VAN HOOL BUSES -more-


Commentary: West Berkeley Air Quality: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

By L A Wood
Tuesday August 28, 2007

The lyrics “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” have certainly been true in West Berkeley where foundry emissions and their noxious odors are a daily reminder of our local air quality crisis. Current levels of airborne chemicals and metal particulates have given zip code 94710 the shameful distinction of having some of the highest levels of asthma in the county. -more-


Smart Growth

By Steve Meyers
Tuesday August 28, 2007

In a recent editorial, Becky O’Malley described “smart growth” as “the unproven theory that making already-developed urban areas ever denser will prevent sprawl into the hinterlands.” While this is often cited as a benefit of smart growth by its advocates, it is only one aspect of smart growth, and the least important from the perspective of Berkeley. -more-


Columns

Column: Dispatches from the Edge: Indonesia and the United States: A Shameful Record

By Conn Hallinan
Friday August 31, 2007

This is a tale about politics, influence, money and murder. It began more than 40 years ago with a bloodletting so massive no one quite knows how many people died. Half a million? A million? Through four decades the story has left a trail of misery and terror. Last month it claimed four peasants, one of them a 27-year-old mother. -more-


Column: Undercurrents: A Few Words on Republican Senator Larry Craig

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday August 31, 2007

If the items on the Crooks and Liars progressive blog are a bellwether of what a good portion of the nation is thinking and talking about, then for a brief period this week, at least, the nation turned its eyes on Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho. -more-


Open House in Focus: Elmwood Townhouse in Cluster on View This Sunday

By Steven Finacom
Friday August 31, 2007

The address 2411-31 Russell St. in southeast Berkeley is a small cluster of mid-century townhouses on the edge of a fashionable neighborhood where stately brown shingle and period revival houses claim most of the curb appeal and attention. -more-


Garden Variety: More Container Planting: Material Differences

By Ron Sullivan
Friday August 31, 2007

Containers for planting are limited only by your imagination—and a few realities, what plants need. -more-


About the House: Time to Consider an On-Demand Water Heater

By Matt Cantor
Friday August 31, 2007

The Europeans have had it all over us for some decades when it comes to energy efficiency. This might have something to do with a political attitude toward wasting energy or sheer economy. In any event, our European brothers and sisters are more inclined to pinch a BTU (that a British Thermal Unit for those of you new to the energy game). -more-


Green Neighbors: The Survival of the Birch Beer Canoodle

By Ron Sullivan
Tuesday August 28, 2007

A birch is about as exotic as a banana here, and maybe they’re both ubiquitous in people’s front yards for similar nostalgic reasons—or maybe instead because they’re so outrageous when you know where you are. -more-


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Friday August 31, 2007

FRIDAY, AUGUST 31 -more-


The Theater: ‘Viaticum: The Carnal Table’ — A Theatrical Feast

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday August 31, 2007

I’m dying! Bring in the gravediggers. Let the mourners come.” On a set out of a Gothic fairytale (designed by Kim A. Tolman)—a crypt with a crazy rose window above, a hovering eye and the Mona Lisa with her face half covered by a hand as she gazes out over the audience, a chessboard below as flooring—Saul Strange (David Usner, himself a skydiver) writhes on his seeming deathbed, rigged with parachute lines, in an upbeat final agony, attended by his family with painted faces (and occasionally a fantastic creature, a kind of celestial butoh drag queen, played by Kinji Hayashi). -more-


Action and Exuberance on Display at SFMOMA

By Justin DeFreitas
Monday April 26, 2010 - 02:09:00 PM

Time is running out to see a superb and fascinating photography exhibit at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. “Think While You Shoot!” a career-spanning retrospective of the tremendously varied body of work by Hungarian-born photographer Martin Munkacsi, runs through Sept. 16. -more-


Open House in Focus: Elmwood Townhouse in Cluster on View This Sunday

By Steven Finacom
Friday August 31, 2007

The address 2411-31 Russell St. in southeast Berkeley is a small cluster of mid-century townhouses on the edge of a fashionable neighborhood where stately brown shingle and period revival houses claim most of the curb appeal and attention. -more-


Garden Variety: More Container Planting: Material Differences

By Ron Sullivan
Friday August 31, 2007

Containers for planting are limited only by your imagination—and a few realities, what plants need. -more-


About the House: Time to Consider an On-Demand Water Heater

By Matt Cantor
Friday August 31, 2007

The Europeans have had it all over us for some decades when it comes to energy efficiency. This might have something to do with a political attitude toward wasting energy or sheer economy. In any event, our European brothers and sisters are more inclined to pinch a BTU (that a British Thermal Unit for those of you new to the energy game). -more-


Berkeley This Week

Friday August 31, 2007

FRIDAY, AUGUST 31 -more-


Arts Calendar

Tuesday August 28, 2007

TUESDAY, AUGUST 28 -more-


Arts and Entertainment Around the East Bay

Tuesday August 28, 2007

‘VIATICUM’ AT LIVE OAK -more-


Books: Delightful Characters of Bygone Berkeley

Tuesday August 28, 2007

By RICHARD BRENNEMAN -more-


Singer Kim Nalley Wows Downtown Jazz Festival

Tuesday August 28, 2007

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor -more-


Green Neighbors: The Survival of the Birch Beer Canoodle

By Ron Sullivan
Tuesday August 28, 2007

A birch is about as exotic as a banana here, and maybe they’re both ubiquitous in people’s front yards for similar nostalgic reasons—or maybe instead because they’re so outrageous when you know where you are. -more-


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday August 28, 2007

TUESDAY, AUGUST 28 -more-


Correction

Tuesday August 28, 2007

Due to overzealous use of the spell-checking function, the name of Pacific Film Archive house pianist Jon Mirsalis was inadvertently printed as Jon Misrules in an Aug. 24 story about avant-garde cinema. We regret the error. -more-